Links I Love

I’m a sucker for great commencement speeches. And I’m a fan of Sheryl Sandberg, but this one hit home. I haven’t lost a husband, like she has, but I do understand what it feels like to not having things go according to plan and having to find a good option B. You should read or watch the whole address (I’ve linked to it above), but here are just a couple of excerpts that hit me:

The question is not if some of these things will happen to you. They will. Today I want to talk about what happens next. About the things you can do to overcome adversity, no matter what form it takes or when it hits you. The easy days ahead of you will be easy. It is the hard days—the times that challenge you to your very core—that will determine who you are. You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive.

Build resilience in yourselves. When tragedy or disappointment strike, know that you have the ability to get through absolutely anything. I promise you do. As the saying goes, we are more vulnerable than we ever thought, but we are stronger than we ever imagined.

Math word problems. Do you remember those? I sometimes loved them and other times hated them because they were usually so weirdly worded that I couldn’t make sense. But these problems? I get them:

Brian dragged Deirdre to a party. If Deirdre spent 6 minutes trapped in boring conversation with strangers, 13 minutes hovering alone near the hors d’oeuvres, and 8 minutes petting a dog in the corner, how much time passed before Deirdre decided to leave?

I understand this. In fact, I used to have a self-imposed 30 minute mark I had to make before I could leave.

I haven’t been taking as many pictures of the books I’m reading these days (I blame the fact that I had only one hand for the majority of April). But I loved this article for plenty of reasons. My sister-in-law texted it to me early one morning and I read it while I was doing sit ups.

So there you have it. Three things that you should read today and then report back to me on what you thought about them. Are you ready to commence with something new? Are you ready to read more and document your reading? Is there any links I should be reading? Let me know in the comments.